Finding your Camino Rhythms

The Camino de Santiago is a 1,200-year old pilgrimage walk across northern Spain to the grave of St. James the Apostle in Santiago de Compostela. Now not only Christian pilgrims but many others also seek to renew or find themselves walking on the Camino. Our Camino de Santiago page lists many reasons for walking the Camino.

Are you thinking about walking the Camino de Santiago but are hesitant about going?

Do you think you cannot go because you don't "know the ropes"? You don't know how to make it happen?

Do you find walking alone in a foreign land too far outside of your comfort zone?

Are you waiting for someone to go with you?

Are you looking for a guide to show you the way?

Are you standing at the threshold but afraid to begin your pilgrimage?

We are Petra Wolf and Mike Metras. We offer you our help to get you past these apprehensions and guide you forward into the life-changing pilgrimage the Camino de Santiago. We want to help you find the spiritual, emotional, and physical rhythms that will help make your Camino experience not only rich and joyful but also a path to improving your life. We want to guide you into the spiritual retreat and personal quest that the Camino can be. Together we offer you spiritual insights and both masculine and feminine visions to the many faces of this pilgrimage route.

We are pilgrimage walkers. We have walked the Camino de Santiago several times. We have also walked across America and southern Europe on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and on other pilgrimage routes in Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy. We have walked regularly for almost ten years now.

Our offering is directed toward your pilgrimage, your personal quest, and our guidance is to help you find your Camino rhythms. It is the beginning of your Camino-long retreat. Our seven days with you are to get you started on a physical, emotional, and spiritual pilgrimage. This offering is not to take a sports walk or a hike across Spain just to see the countryside, though you will be doing that incidentally and enjoying it. This offering is also not a cultural, architectural, or historical tour, though we will stop at some churches and will point out some historical points of interest.

We believe walking the Camino at its best is fundamentally a personal pilgrimage. When you begin your pilgrimage with us, we will help you make your first steps. We will introduce you to the Camino, show you the physical and spiritual ropes, help you find your Camino rhythm, and then leave you to walk your own pilgrimage with confidence.

Though we are offering this from American soil, this is an international offering. We look forward to having international groups. Everyone will come out ahead when we have multi-cultural groups. Petra, a native of Germany, speaks German. And we both speak some Spanish, Italian, and French.

What do we offer you?

We offer group and individual options. Both offerings are divided into three segments: preparation, walking with you, and follow-up.

Preparation at your home before you begin:

We will give you an eight-hour online workshop ("webinar") to prepare you for your pilgrimage. This will be at a convenient time around three to four weeks before the walk.

We will have at least two contacts with each person in the group after the workshop to answer your questions before we begin.

Walking with you along the Camino.

We meet you at the Pamplona bus station the evening before we begin to walk.

We begin our pilgrimage in Roncesvalles and walk with you seven days.

We have daily practical considerations:

On your outer path: like, how to walk efficiently and comfortably, places to stop along the way, how the hostel (alberge) system works and how to adjust to it, and how to not over-work yourself.

On your inner path: spiritual and meditative suggestions. This includes daily themes for the walk.

Each day you will make more and more decisions and contributions to your walk. By the time your guides leave, your rhythms should be ready to help you dance joyfully along your pilgrimage.

Follow up after the pilgrimage.
No one returns unchanged from the Camino. You will be a different person. To walk the Camino is often the easier part. Our follow-up is to help you integrate these changes into your life.

Around two weeks after you return home from your Camino experience, we will send you questions to consider. They will center on how you are integrating your Camino changes into your life.

Soon after that we will have two, on line or phone sessions with you. We will be ready to answer any questions you have and follow up on the questions we sent you.

Basically, we propose to teach, guide, and empower you with these seven days on the Camino and then to release you to walk your Camino pilgrimage. Afterwards, we plan to contact you to see how all went and how you have integrated your changes into your daily life.